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Richard Milburn High School
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Since 1978, Non-Public Educational Services, Inc. (NESI) president, Robert Crosby has not only been revolutionizing the educational system for at-risk students, but he’s also founded one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. NESI serves over 15,000 students across 120 U.S. cities and eight foreign countries.
SPOTLIGHTS FEATURE
Stellar Students
Fast Fact: NESI also provides educational services to Richard Milburn Academies (RMA), non-profit public charter high schools with nine schools in Texas and five in Florida. Including the charters, NESI delivers educational services to more than 15,000 students in 120 cities, across 17 states, eight foreign countries and two U.S. territories
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SPOTLIGHTS RICHARD MILBURN HIGH SCHOOL
& Sound Success by Rebecca Rodriguez
Non-Public Educational Services, Inc. (NESI) and Richard Milburn High Schools (RMHS), a wholly owned subsidiary, have become powerhouse providers of educational services and outstanding public high schools in the United States and worldwide. NESI is fast becoming one of the most powerful companies in the country, with Inc. Magazine identifying NESI among the top 5000 fastest growing companies in the U.S. for 2009. “The educational market is a great market,” said Robert Crosby, president of NESI. For this $30 million company with 1000 employees, educational excellence is something for which Crosby always strives. Behind these impressive numbers is a simple credo to help students, especially struggling students, achieve success. Many students who attend NESI’s affiliate
high schools are students who have felt overwhelmed in overcrowded public schools and have dropped out. “Our kids are the ‘back row’ kids,” Crosby said. “Every public high school teacher wants to get rid of them, but we want to make them ‘front row’ kids by connecting with them and making them successful.” Richard Milburn High Schools have a drop out rate of less than 10 percent, an impressive statistic considering 100 percent of the students coming in were at-risk students. A survey of students six months after graduation shows that about 40 percent have gone on to college, he said. “I’ll put that number up against any alternative school for at-risk students in this country,” Crosby said. Parents are overwhelmed with gratitude when they see their children succeed after having believed they would never graduate high school.
“We’ve saved lives. If you attend one of our graduations, you’ll cry. Most parents had given up on their kids and now they’re going onto college or the military. They love us,” he said. One such proud mother that sticks out in Crosby’s mind had come to him when her son was incarcerated in Virginia about fifteen years ago after a racial dispute. The mother asked RMHS to please send a teacher to the jail to help her son earn a high school diploma and subsequent pardon from the governor. Crosby agreed. Her son was Allen Iverson, a proud graduate of Richard Milburn High School. Iverson went to attend Georgetown University, earned the rookie of the year title with the NBA and became an annual NBA All Star. Along with operating the high schools, NESI provides educational services to other schools in the areas of Title I and Supplemental Educational Services (SES) for tutoring. NESI provides inschool Title I services and after-school SES tutoring for elementary, middle, and high school students. NESI also provides postsecondary academic skills and language courses to U.S. military personnel stationed in the U.S. and throughout the world. Richard Milburn High Schools (RMHS), a subsidiary of NESI, operate small high schools operated under contract with local school districts. NESI and RMHS operate as for-profit businesses. The three RMHS schools operate in North Carolina, Illinois, and Virginia. The RMHS schools offer smaller class sizes of a 15-to-1 studentEducation Leaders Today
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Supports NESI and RMHS with Award-Winning Comprehensive Courseware That Is Ideal for Education Service Providers Offering Online K–12 Self-Paced Instruction Successful Credit Recovery Solution Powerful Student Assessment Capability Effective in Alternative Learning Environments Broad and Deep K–12 Curriculum Content Complete Response to Intervention Solution Extensive Student Data Tracking Comprehensive Student Reporting State Standard Alignment
teacher ratio. The schools have less than 400 students. A firm goal of the schools is to make the students feel safe, comfortable, and involved. “A sense of family is created,” Crosby said. “Every teacher knows every student and every student knows every teacher.” Teachers at Milburn love the challenge of an at-risk student, he said. The school attracts young teachers who are up to the task. He provides them with good pay and offers bonuses if achievement goals are attained. “Tenure is not in the Richard Milburn dictionary,” Crosby said. “We are a performance-based company.” Fully-accredited high school online courses are also offered through RMHS’s Milburn High School Online program. More than 100 high school courses are offered online and credit is transferable to any high school in the U.S. This online degree program is fully-accredited through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). The program boasts about a 90 percent success rate which is higher than the national average. Students work at their own pace while having full accessibility to teachers. Crosby has high hopes for the online high school, seeing it growing to 100,000 students in the next five years. “It has enormous potential,” he said, adding that he plans on growing the program slowly for quality control. Just last year, RMHS partnered with Pearson, who acquired eCollege’s highly reliable platform, and BocaVox, developer of the powerful student information system called Maestro. Just as so many colleges are now offering online courses, Crosby sees high schools following the same path. “What’s happening with colleges will happen with high schools,” he said, stressing that he sees online learning as a supplement to regular high school, not a replacement. Crosby started NESI in 1978 with government contracts for Title I programs and then shifted into the military market in the mid 1980s with educational contracts from the U.S. Army. That’s when RMHS got its start, mostly running small programs for adults wanting to get high school diplomas. But Crosby had the inspiration to expand the school to include high-school aged
About The American Education Corporation For the past 29 years, The American Education Corporation (AEC) has earned the position as a recognized leader in K-12 education and college readiness preparation. AEC provides the nation’s schools with online, self-paced formative assessments linked to comprehensive K-12 content to drive and inform instruction. AEC’s research-based K-12 courseware is comprised of 148 instructional courses that deliver over 5,400 lessons that encompass all core content. This content depth allows for the delivery of standards-based assessment and personalized instruction leading to in-depth, customizable reporting. AEC products are currently used in more than 15,000 schools nationwide. In 2009, AEC’s online educational solutions delivered more than 2.6 million online study hours to approximately 118,000 students in over 5,000 schools.
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SPOTLIGHTS RICHARD MILBURN HIGH SCHOOL
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Robert Crosby president of NESI.
We’ve saved lives. You go to a graduation and you’ll cry. Most parents had given up on their kids and now they’re going onto college or the military. children, repositioning itself for drop out and high risk kids. “We took RMHS from a small mom and pop operation to a big player,” Crosby said. Jumping ahead to the present day, Crosby said he sees his company as a big player in another market. Recovering poorly performing public schools is something Crosby sees his company expanding into. Crosby is in the early proposal stage for taking over a poorly performing small high school with a high minority and poverty population in Philadelphia, Pa. It would entail hiring an entirely new staff, refurbishing the building, and garnering community support. The school, if the proposal is accepted, would be run by RMHS under contract with the Philadelphia School District. “It’s an option for school districts to have us take over a small, poorperforming high school and turn it around into a great school,” Crosby said. Crosby, who grew up in the working class neighborhood of Gallows Hill in Salem, Mass., - he knows what it’s like to be a Title I kid in need of a better school. He worked his way up to attend the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and eventually earned a master’s degree in administration from George Washington University. It’s a path to success many of Crosby’s students might like to follow. And his schools are giving them the tools to achieve those dreams. ELT Education Leaders Today
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